<p>Charles’ Law and the baking of cake: </p>
<p>V1/T1 = V2/T2</p>
<p>Baking soda produces CO2. When you pop the room-temp (T1) cake batter (V1) in the hot oven, the trapped CO2 expands (V2) in direct proportion to the increased temperature (T2). You can see the cake swell bigger when you put it in the oven.</p>
<p>The cooking of the batter “freezes” the matrix that is trapping the expanded gas, so when you take the cake out of the oven, you have in essence taken a snapshot of the magnitude of the gas expansion (V2) at the set oven temperature (T2).</p>
<p>@dmd77, I don’t think this is a silly assignment. I think it is an EXCELLENT assignment. Too many kids learn how to calculate the correct answer for a physics problem (or any other subject), but they don’t really understand the concept.</p>